Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

Chapter 36

The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or two with arranging my things in my
chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, in the order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief absence. Meantime, I
heard St. John quit his room. He stopped at my door: I feared he would knock — no, but a slip of paper was passed under
the door. I took it up. It bore these words —

“You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little longer, you would have laid your hand on the
Christian’s cross and the angel’s crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this day fortnight. Meantime,
watch and pray that you enter not into temptation: the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is weak. I
shall pray for you hourly. — Yours, St. John.”

“My spirit,” I answered mentally, “is willing to do what is right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to
accomplish the will of Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be strong enough to
search — inquire — to grope an outlet from this cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty.”

It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly: rain beat fast on my casement. I heard the
front-door open, and St. John pass out. Looking through the window, I saw him traverse the garden. He took the way over
the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross — there he would meet the coach.

“In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin,” thought I: “I too have a coach to meet at
Whitcross. I too have some to see and ask after in England, before I depart for ever.”

It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in walking softly about my room, and pondering the
visitation which had given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced: for I could
recall it, with all its unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came,
as vainly as before: it seemed in me — not in the external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression — a
delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like
the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas’s prison; it had opened the doors of the soul’s cell and
loosed its bands — it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated
thrice a cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared nor shook, but
exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous
body.

“Ere many days,” I said, as I terminated my musings, “I will know something of him whose voice seemed last night to
summon me. Letters have proved of no avail — personal inquiry shall replace them.”

At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a journey, and should be absent at least four days.

“Alone, Jane?” they asked.

“Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some time been uneasy.”

They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had believed me to be without any friends save
them: for, indeed, I had often said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained from comment, except that
Diana asked me if I was sure I was well enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied, that nothing
ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to alleviate.

It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with no inquiries — no surmises. Having once
explained to them that I could not now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely acquiesced in the silence
with which I pursued them, according to me the privilege of free action I should under similar circumstances have
accorded them.

I left Moor House at three o’clock p.m., and soon after four I stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross,
waiting the arrival of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the silence of those solitary roads
and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted
one summer evening on this very spot — how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered
— not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield,
I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.

It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the
succeeding Thursday morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the midst of scenery
whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral hills (how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the
stern North-Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes, I knew the character
of this landscape: I was sure we were near my bourne.

“How far is Thornfield Hall from here?” I asked of the ostler.

“Just two miles, ma’am, across the fields.”

“My journey is closed,” I thought to myself. I got out of the coach, gave a box I had into the ostler’s charge, to
be kept till I called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going: the brightening day gleamed on the
sign of the inn, and I read in gilt letters, “The Rochester Arms.” My heart leapt up: I was already on my master’s very
lands. It fell again: the thought struck it:-

“Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall,
towards which you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do with him: you dare not
speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost your labour — you had better go no farther,” urged the monitor. “Ask
information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that
man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home.”

The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me
with despair. To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the ray of her star. There
was the stile before me — the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury
tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course I had resolved to take, I
was in the midst of them. How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to catch the first view of the
well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between
them!

At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke the morning stillness. Strange delight
inspired me: on I hastened. Another field crossed — a lane threaded — and there were the courtyard walls — the back
offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid. “My first view of it shall be in front,” I determined, “where its
bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single out my master’s very window: perhaps he will
be standing at it — he rises early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in front. Could I but
see him! — but a moment! Surely, in that case, I should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell — I am not
certain. And if I did — what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by my once more tasting the life his
glance can give me? I rave: perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the tideless
sea of the south.”

I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard — turned its angle: there was a gate just there, opening into the
meadow, between two stone pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep round quietly at the full
front of the mansion. I advanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet
drawn up: battlements, windows, long front — all from this sheltered station were at my command.

The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey. I wonder what they thought. They must have
considered I was very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and reckless. A peep, and then a
long stare; and then a departure from my niche and a straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in front of
the great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it. “What affectation of diffidence was this at first?” they
might have demanded; “what stupid regardlessness now?”

Hear an illustration, reader.

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her.
He steals softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses — fancying she has stirred: he withdraws: not for
worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he
lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty — warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How
hurried was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the
form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on
it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter — by any
movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead.

I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened ruin.

No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed! — to peep up at chamber lattices, fearing life was astir behind them!
No need to listen for doors opening — to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk! The lawn, the grounds were
trodden and waste: the portal yawned void. The front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a well-like wall, very
high and very fragile-looking, perforated with paneless windows: no roof, no battlements, no chimneys — all had crashed
in.

And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to
people here had never received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church aisle. The grim blackness of
the stones told by what fate the Hall had fallen — by conflagration: but how kindled? What story belonged to this
disaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble and wood-work had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as
property? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there was no one here to answer it — not even dumb sign, mute token.

In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity
was not of late occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void arch, winter rains beaten in at
those hollow casements; for, amidst the drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation: grass and weed grew
here and there between the stones and fallen rafters. And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck? In
what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked, “Is
he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrow marble house?”

Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere but at the inn, and thither, ere long, I
returned. The host himself brought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit down: I had
some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible
answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host
was a respectable-looking, middle-aged man.

“You know Thornfield Hall, of course?” I managed to say at last.

“Yes, ma’am; I lived there once.”

“Did you?” Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.

“I was the late Mr. Rochester’s butler,” he added.

The late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I had been trying to evade.

“The late!” I gasped. “Is he dead?”

“I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward’s father,” he explained. I breathed again: my blood resumed its flow.
Fully assured by these words that Mr. Edward — my Mr. Rochester (God bless him, wherever he was!) — was at
least alive: was, in short, “the present gentleman.” Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all that was to come —
whatever the disclosures might be — with comparative tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear, I
thought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes.

“Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?” I asked, knowing, of course, what the answer would be, but yet
desirous of deferring the direct question as to where he really was.

“No, ma’am — oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a stranger in these parts, or you would have heard
what happened last autumn, — Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about harvest-time. A dreadful
calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved. The fire
broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of flame. It was a
terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself.”

“At dead of night!” I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality at Thornfield. “Was it known how it
originated?” I demanded.

“They guessed, ma’am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps
aware,” he continued, edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, “that there was a lady — a — a
lunatic, kept in the house?”

“I have heard something of it.”

“She was kept in very close confinement, ma’am: people even for some years was not absolutely certain of her
existence. No one saw her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what she was it was
difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress.
But a queer thing happened a year since — a very queer thing.”

I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to the main fact.

“And this lady?”

“This lady, ma’am,” he answered, “turned out to be Mr. Rochester‘s wife! The discovery was brought about in the
strangest way. There was a young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in — ”

“But the fire,” I suggested.

“I’m coming to that, ma‘am — that Mr. Edward fell in love with. The servants say they never saw anybody so much in
love as he was: he was after her continually. They used to watch him — servants will, you know, ma’am — and he set
store on her past everything: for all, nobody but him thought her so very handsome. She was a little small thing, they
say, almost like a child. I never saw her myself; but I’ve heard Leah, the house-maid, tell of her. Leah liked her well
enough. Mr. Rochester was about forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen of his age fall in
love with girls, they are often like as if they were bewitched. Well, he would marry her.”

“You shall tell me this part of the story another time,” I said; “but now I have a particular reason for wishing to
hear all about the fire. Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in it?”

“You’ve hit it, ma‘am: it’s quite certain that it was her, and nobody but her, that set it going. She had a woman to
take care of her called Mrs. Poole — an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one fault — a fault
common to a deal of them nurses and matrons — she kept a private bottle of gin by her, and now and then took a
drop over-much. It is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous; for when Mrs. Poole was
fast asleep after the gin and water, the mad lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her
pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house, doing any wild mischief that came into her
head. They say she had nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don’t know about that. However, on this night,
she set fire first to the hangings of the room next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made her way
to the chamber that had been the governess’s — (she was like as if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and had a
spite at her) — and she kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately. The governess had run
away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the
world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew savage — quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild
man, but he got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her
friends at a distance; but he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she deserved it — she
was a very good woman. Miss Adele, a ward he had, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and
shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall.”

“What! did he not leave England?”

“Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of the house, except at night, when he walked just
like a ghost about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses — which it is my opinion he had; for a
more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma’am.
He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage
and a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part, I have often wished that Miss
Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall.”

“Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?”

“Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning above and below, and got the servants out of
their beds and helped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And then they called out to
him that she was on the roof, where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till
they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black hair:
we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood. I witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester
ascend through the sky-light on to the roof; we heard him call ‘Bertha!’ We saw him approach her; and then, ma’am, she
yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement.”

"The next minute she lay smashed on the pavement"

“Dead?”

“Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were scattered.”

“Good God!”

“You may well say so, ma’am: it was frightful!”

He shuddered.

“And afterwards?” I urged.

“Well, ma’am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are only some bits of walls standing now.”

“Were any other lives lost?”

“No — perhaps it would have been better if there had.”

“What do you mean?”

“Poor Mr. Edward!” he ejaculated, “I little thought ever to have seen it! Some say it was a just judgment on him for
keeping his first marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one living: but I pity him, for my
part.”

“You said he was alive?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead.”

“Why? How?” My blood was again running cold. “Where is he?” I demanded. “Is he in England?”

“Ay — ay — he’s in England; he can‘t get out of England, I fancy — he’s a fixture now.”

What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it.

“He is stone-blind,” he said at last. “Yes, he is stone-blind, is Mr. Edward.”

I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to ask what had caused this calamity.

“It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way, ma’am: he wouldn‘t leave the house till
every one else was out before him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself
from the battlements, there was a great crash — all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt:
a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr.
Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed: he lost the sight of that also. He is now
helpless, indeed — blind and a cripple.”

“Where is he? Where does he now live?”

“At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off: quite a desolate spot.”

“Who is with him?”

“Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite broken down, they say.”

“Have you any sort of conveyance?”

“We have a chaise, ma’am, a very handsome chaise.”

“Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to Ferndean before dark this day, I’ll pay both
you and him twice the hire you usually demand.”